To ask for help with a question for my novel...

[Marlboroughlights1]

Mumsnet has been a great hive before...so, as I'm very far into the last draft and very tired, I'm throwing myself on your mercy

1959. Someone receives letters and bills by post. I'm looking for interesting ideas for what 2 of those letters/bills could be! I can't think. I literally have brain freeze. Thank you.

A hospital bill after recovering from TB and a letter from an uncle who's planning on visiting next month!

Oooh.

1959 - everything would be received by post. Bills for gas and electricity. Bank statements (I think they might have been every three months but I don't know where I got that from.) Letters from family and friends. Postcards from someone on holiday.

The post worked very quickly in those days. When my mum and dad married in 1952 there were several deliveries a day.

My mum used to write a weekly letter home to her mother.

Weekly grocery bill.

Air mail from a family member living overseas.

An appointment at the hospital. A dental appointment. (The NHS had started.)

Doctor's or dentist's bill.

In 1959 medical care would have been NHS, but you would have got cheques returned by the bank after they'd been presented to your account. Depending on status you might have a monthly account with local suppliers - grocer, butcher etc - so you'd get bills for that?

A letter saying they needed to go and listen to someone's will being read

A bill for that person's funeral

A letter from someone in prison

I found this, a woman who found her fathers household accounts up to 1962. Apologies if the link doesn’t work, it’s my first time but I googled ‘household bills uk 1950’s’

www.1900s.org.uk/1950s-household-accounts.htm

In the late 1950’s, my DM would receive a post card in the morning from my DGGM telling her to expect a visit that afternoon! Sure enough, Great Granny would arrive on the bus with a basket of home baking and fresh eggs from her farm.

An invitation - dinner party, garden party or wedding.

The tail end of the period of National Service - letter from a son, brother, nephew or lover serving overseas?

You are all AMAZING! Thank you. We should write this novel collectively, then I could go to bed and sleep for a year

Oooh interesting idea. How about a letter from a German mother/or the child letting a man/ex-soldier know of a child he fathered during the war.

Something to do with an adoption, potentially creating a previously unknown branch to the family tree?

Isn't that amazing, how cheques presented at the bank used to be returned. I love that

A letter from someone she hasn't seen since the war who knows about a misdemeanour/mistake of hers that had serious consequences.

A bill for a child's cot but she doesn't have a child and has never had one.

It's actually for a very small part of a chapter, and I've got some fab ideas. Thanks again

My grandparents kept all their letters. The most fascinating ones I found when they died were hundreds and hundreds of letters and postcards stating that the dates they requested for their holiday (including their honeymoon) weren't available at various guest houses and b&bs. Imagine having to write to each one before the internet/phones were common in every house and then wait for the response back. It must have made going on holiday so difficult.

(They had a very 'foreign' sounding surname so I think that might be why they were so often refused. Or perhaps that was everyone's experience in the 50s when everyone holidayed in the UK.)

I know people were still booking holidays by post back in the 50s. Could be a letter about a booking? Or how to make payment, perhaps.
Also, other bills could be for hire purchase agreements, hadn't they just come in around that time?

A very early Premium Bond win?

Few working class people had bank accounts and fewer women.

My mum used to get regular letters from her mother and sisters. We didn't have a phone so it was the only way to keep in touch: they lived the other side of the country. As a rule they were just full of inconsequential gossip.
One I do remember was my aunt telling us that my 16 year old cousin had just had a baby. She had kept it secret for almost 8 months, so it was a real shock for her mother when she went into labour.